Welcome to ROe-pals!

Strengths

• Membership is free in global community (200 countries, 600,000 K12 classrooms)
• Free to use the powerful, teacher-monitored SchoolMail
• Students can connect to other students anywhere in the world
• Teachers reach out to other teachers and connect their classes as a whole; students are not seeking out other students to pair up with
• Safe and protected; managed by teachers and administrators
• Collaborative Learning Experience
• Designed for primary and secondary schools to use
• Tour provided to familiarize users with site
• Students can all share a similar user name and password or can each have their own
• Language translation feature in SchoolMail and in profiles to 35 languages
• Student forums allow students to read and respond to postings from other students, moderated by ePals staff (students can ask a question and get answers from around the world!)
• Fast and easy registration process
• Allows students to take virtual field trips and compete in fun contests with children from all over the world
• Teacher's corner is filled with lessons, tips and tools to use in the classroom
• Contains collaborative projects allowing children in different nations to interact, give suggestions, and support one another through the use of forums
• Provides a variety of ways to find others with whom to interact (Search by classroom, map, or project)
• Offers secure e-mail option.
• Provides a school blog that offers customized security and moderation functions to monitor activity and restrict user access.
• Allows forum interaction based on the categories of students, teachers, and parents
• ePals, Inc. is a certified licensee of the TRUSTe® Children's Privacy Program, which has been approved by the Federal Trade Commission as an authorized safe harbor under the Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule. (Not that many education sites have TRUSTe certification standards.)

• Teacher-driven (for projects), though Student Forums are completely student-driven
• Requires students ages 13 and under to provide a parent/guardian's email address. This could be a problem in low socioeconomic areas where parents don't have access to home computers, much less internet. When a teacher registers a class, this isn't a problem, as the teacher gets parental permission (on paper if not on computer).
• Although the focus areas and projects available are standards based, they are limited in number.

• Through ePals privacy policy they are allowed to share personally identifiable information to third parties for educational purposes. This is said to be limited, although ePals does link to other sites and are not liable for the data collection practices of those sites.

Ideas for the classroom:

• Can be implemented as a way for students to research other countries
• Can be implemented as a way for students to share newly learned material with other students learning about the same topics
• Can be implemented as a way for students to make connections with other students on a personal level
• Can be used to actively engage students in scholarly discussions
• Can be used to further knowledge and understanding of various cultures
• Can be used as a tool for cooperative learning and project-based exploration/learning
• Can be used for students to practice another language (Spanish, English, or whatever language) with native speakers, either in home country or wherever they live today
• Can be way for students to extend learning about another place beyond what is in the textbook to include what they can learn from people who live in those other places
• Can provide means of alternative assessment for the teacher. For example, the assignment "describe your home and where your family eats" can be written on paper or for a pen pal. Instead of just writin this for the teacher, the student can write for a pen pal and read what the pen pal writes back, increasing authentic use of language.